A lot of young players impressed with their performances in the recently concluded edition of the ICC U-19 World Cup. Some of them have even gone on to earn IPL contracts. Here, we will take a look at five of those players to watch out for in IPL 2020.
Yashasvi Jaiswal: The most obvious pick from the recent U-19 batch would be the prodigious Yashasvi Jaiswal who will be representing the Rajasthan Royals outfit in the upcoming IPL 2020 season. The 18-year-old has been making waves in the Indian cricketing circles for quite a while. For the India U-19 side, Jaiswal built a staggering career record which included 1386 runs from just 27 matches. Apart from these exploits, the southpaw did so well to end the 2019-20 Vijay Hazare Trophy with 564 runs from 6 matches. This run tally also included a cracking double-hundred against a strong Jharkhand bowling attack to become the youngest-ever batsman to score 200 runs in a List A game.
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Such performances were never going to miss the eyes of IPL teams and the Mumbai batsman was duly rewarded with an attractive Rs 2.4 Crore contract in the 2020 IPL Auction. Even after this, Jaiswal made the world look at him with some scintillating knocks in the 2020 U-19 World Cup. Even though, India missed out on the title by a smallest of margins, Jaiswal went onto bag the ‘Player of the Tournament’ award for his 400 runs from six games.
With Rajasthan Royals trading off the experienced Ajinkya Rahane, Yashasvi is probably the best placed among his U-19 batchmates to get a long run in the upcoming IPL season. Don’t be surprised if Jaiswal goes onto impress immediately as he has the ability to switch gears very quickly. Somewhat underrated but Jaiswal could also be handy with his part-time leg-spin bowling.
Ravi Bishnoi: For the last few years, leg-spinners have emerged as match-winners and Kings XI Punjab might have just acquired one such budding star in the form of Ravi Bishnoi. The young Rajasthan leg-spinner has become the talk of the town after some stellar performances during the U-19 World Cup. Even Asian sides who are known to produce batsmen who play spin well as several players struggled to decipher Bishnoi’s variations during the World Cup.
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The 18-year-old even went onto overshadow the likes of Kartik Tyagi and Atharva Ankolekar by finishing the tournament as the leading wicket-taker with 17 scalps from six matches. The tournmament saw Bishnoi improve his control by leaps and bounds since the U-19 Challenger Trophy which was held last year. Like Rashid Khan, Bishnoi also bowls pretty quick along with a flat trajectory with these aspects making him an attractive composition for T20 cricket. Although it would be tough to break into a KXIP team that will also see Murugan Ashwin, Jagadeesha Suchith and Mujeeb Ur Rahman challenging for possibly two spots, Bishnoi would be placed to do well if the opportunity arises.
Kartik Tyagi: It has been a revolution of sorts in Indian cricket as the system continues to produce talented fast bowlers ever since the last 5-6 years. While it was Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Shivam Mavi and Ishan Porel who impressed during the 2016 U-19 World Cup, Rajasthan’s Kartik Tyagi led an equally impressive bowling attack in South Africa earlier this year.
Just a month before the World Cup, Kartik was signed by Rajasthan Royals for a sum of Rs 1.3 Crore. The price tag wasn’t surprising at all as Kartik had established himself as one of the most exciting upcoming pacers in the country. The right-arm fast bowler from Hapur in Uttar Pradesh had played five List A games and picked up nine wickets. Even though these statistics reflect a good start to domestic cricket, it was Kartik’s performances for India U-19 that captured everyone’s attention. Between the end of the 2018 U-19 World Cup and this year’s edition, the UP fast bowler had registered 18 wickets in 12 matches.
He then went onto start the World Cup campaign with a bang by securing a hat-trick against Afghanistan in a warm-up match. In the regular tournament, the 19-year-old went onto pick up 11 wickets while impressing quite a few experts and commentators. Kartik is already known for his ability to swing the ball at speeds over 140 KPH while also having a valuable quality of bowling inch-perfect yorkers. However despite all the promise, Tyagi might have to bide his time to get an opportunity in the Rajasthan Royals line-up.
Priyam Garg: While looking at the Indian U-19 team, skipper Priyam Garg who will be turning out for Sunrisers Hyderabad can’t be forgotten at any cost. Although Garg didn’t have the best of campaigs during the World Cup, his captaincy and proactive decision-making stood out for everyone. Also, a few low scores cannot mean that Garg is a talented batsman too. In fact, before the World Cup, most fans and experts predicted Yashasvi Jaiswal and Priyam Garg to be the two pillars in India’s batting line-up.
Such has been his performances and promise in domestic cricket that Indian fans even started talking about the youngster as a potential senior Indian team player in a few years’ time. This augured well for Garg as all the attention was on the Indian team’s weak-looking middle-order. The Meerut-native made the news especially when he came up with a valiant 77-ball 74 on a difficult track in the 2019-20 Deodhar Trophy final when most of the established players like Mayank Agarwal, Suryakumar Yadav and Dinesh Karthik failed to get going.
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Overall too, the middle-order batsman has built up a stellar domestic record with 867 runs in 12 First-class matches while also coming up with 707 runs in 19 List-A matches. With SRH also known to have a weak middle-order like the Indian team, Garg could get a handful of opportunities to impress further during the IPL season.
Akash Singh: The final India U-19 pick Akash Singh will join team-mate Kartik Tyagi to represent Rajasthan Royals in the upcoming IPL season. The left-arm seamer might be the one who could find it the toughest to break into an IPL team this year. In spite of that, Akash still remains an impressive prospect who could be worth looking forward to.
The Rajasthan-native backs up his aggression with solid performances with the ball on most occasions. Akash made his senior-level debut for Rajasthan in the 2019 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and it to be a rather good day as he picked up two wickets in a spell that cost only 26 runs. While this performance wouldn’t have meant a lot to IPL franchises, Akash did do well to get a Rs 20 Lakh bid from Rajasthan Royals through his consistent performances for both the Rajasthan age-group teams and also the India U-19 side. In fact, just a few months before the IPL Auction, Akash helped India lift the U-19 Asia Cup title by registering figures of 5-0-12-3 in a thrilling final against Bangladesh. It was a terrific display of bowling which made Indian fans get accustomed to his superb swing-bowling.
From there on, Akash went on to do well during the U-19 World Cup in South Africa by contributing seven wickets in six games to help India finish at the 2nd position in the tournament. Like mentioned before, the 17-year-old could find it difficult to play any matches for Rajasthan Royals as he would have to pip the likes of Ankit Rajpoot, Jaydev Unadkat, Varun Aaron apart from his U-19 team-mate in the form of Kartik Tyagi.
